Now and then somebody's pet monkey would
escape along the stone walls and shed-roofs, and try to hide from
his boy-persecutors by dodging behind a chimney, or by slipping
through an open scuttle, to the terror and delight of juveniles
whose premises he invaded.
And there were wanderers from foreign countries domesticated in
many families, whose swarthy complexions and un-Caucasian
features became familiar in our streets,--Mongolians, Africans,
and waifs from the Pacific islands, who always were known to us
by distinguished names,--Hector and Scipio, and Julius Caesar and
Christopher Columbus. Families of black people were scattered
about the place, relics of a time when even New England had not
freed her slaves. Some of them had belonged in my great-grand-
father's family, and they hung about the old homestead at "The
Farms" long after they were at liberty to go anywhere they
pleased. There was a "Rose" and a "Phillis" among them, who came
often to our house to bring luscious high blackberries from the
Farms woods, or to do the household washing.
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